Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (35 page)

 
          
In
Mrs. Mant’s life, the transition from one enthusiasm to another was always
marked by an interval of disillusionment, during which,
Providence
having failed to fulfill her requirements,
its existence was openly called into question. But in this flux of moods there
was one fixed point: Mrs. Mant was a woman whose life revolved about a bunch of
keys. What treasures they gave access to, what disasters would have ensued had
they been forever lost, was not quite clear; but whenever they were missed the
household was in an uproar, and as Mrs. Mant would trust them to no one but
herself, these occasions were frequent. One of them arose at the very moment
when Mrs. Mant was recovering from her enthusiasm for Miss Winter. A minute
before, the keys had been there, in a pocket of her work-table; she had
actually touched them in hunting for her buttonhole-scissors. She had been
called away to speak to the plumber about the bath-room leak, and when she left
the room there was no one in it but Miss Winter. When she returned, the keys
were gone. The house had been turned inside out; everyone had been, if not accused,
at least suspected; and in a rash moment Mrs. Mant had spoken of the police.
The housemaid had thereupon given warning, and her own maid threatened to
follow; when suddenly the Bishop’s hints recurred to Mrs. Mant. The bishop had
always implied that there had been something irregular in Dr. Winter’s
accounts, besides the other unfortunate business…

 
          
Very
mildly, she had asked Miss Winter if she might not have seen the keys, and
“picked them up without thinking.” Miss Winter permitted herself to smile in
denying the suggestion; the smile irritated Mrs. Mant; and in a moment the
floodgates were opened. She saw nothing to smile at in her question—unless it
was of a kind that Miss Winter was already used to, prepared for…with that sort
of background …her unfortunate father…

 
          
“Stop!”
Lizzie Winter cried. She remembered now, as if it
had happened yesterday, the abyss suddenly opening at her feet. It was her
first direct contact with human cruelty. Suffering, weakness, frailties other
than Mrs. Mant’s restricted fancy could have pictured, the girl had known, or
at least suspected; but she had found as much kindness as folly in her path,
and no one had ever before attempted to visit upon her the dimly-guessed
shortcomings of her poor old father. She shook with horror as much as with
indignation, and her “Stop!” blazed out so violently that Mrs. Mant, turning
white, feebly groped for the bell.

 
          
And
it was then, at that very moment, that Charles Hazeldean came in—Charles
Hazeldean, the favourite nephew, the pride of the tribe. Lizzie had seen him
only once or twice, for he had been absent since her return to
New York
. She had thought him distinguished-looking,
but rather serious and sarcastic; and he had apparently taken little notice of
her—which perhaps accounted for her opinion.

 
          
“Oh,
Charles, dearest Charles—that you should be here to hear such things said to
me!” his aunt gasped, her hand on her outraged heart.

 
          
“What
things? Said by whom? I see no one here to say them but Miss Winter,” Charles
had laughed, taking the girl’s icy hand.

 
          
“Don’t
shake hands with her! She has insulted me! She has ordered me to keep
silence—in my own house. “Stop!” she said, when I was trying, in the kindness
of my heart, to get her to admit privately… Well, if she prefers to have the
police…”

 
          
“I
do! I ask you to send for them!” Lizzie cried.

 
          
How
vividly she remembered all that followed: the finding of the keys, Mrs. Mant’s
reluctant apologies, her own cold acceptance of them, and the sense on both
sides of the impossibility of continuing their life together! She had been
wounded to the soul, and her own plight first revealed to her in all its
destitution. Before that, despite the ups and downs of a wandering life, her
youth, her good looks, the sense of a certain bright power over people and
events, had hurried her along on a spring tide of confidence; she had never
thought of herself as the dependent, the beneficiary, of the persons who were
kind to her. Now she saw herself, at twenty, a penniless girl, with a feeble
discredited father carrying his snowy head, his unctuous voice,
his
edifying manner from one cheap watering-place to
another, through an endless succession of sentimental and pecuniary
entanglements. To him she could be of no more help than he to her; and save for
him she was alone. The
Winter
cousins, as much
humiliated by his disgrace as they had been puffed-up by his triumphs, let it
be understood, when the breach with Mrs. Mant became known, that they were not
in a position to interfere; and among Dr. Winter’s former parishioners none was
left to champion him. Almost at the same time, Lizzie heard that he was about
to marry a Portuguese opera-singer and be received into the Church of Rome; and
this crowning scandal too promptly justified his family.

 
          
The
situation was a grave one, and called for energetic measures. Lizzie understood
it—and a week later she was engaged to Charles Hazeldean.

 
          
She
always said afterward that but for the keys he would never have thought of
marrying her; while he laughingly affirmed that, on the contrary, but for the
keys she would never have looked at
him
.

 
          
But
what did it all matter, in the complete and blessed understanding which was to
follow on their hasty union? If all the advantages on both sides had been
weighed and found equal by judicious advisers, harmony more complete could
hardly have been predicted. As a matter of fact, the advisers, had they been
judicious, would probably have found only elements of discord in the characters
concerned. Charles Hazeldean was by nature an observer and a student, brooding
and curious of mind: Lizzie Winter (as she looked back at herself)—what was
she, what would she ever be, but a quick, ephemeral creature, in whom a
perpetual and adaptable activity simulated mind, as her grace, her swiftness,
her expressiveness simulated beauty? So others would have judged her; so, now,
she judged herself. And she knew that in fundamental things she was still the
same. And yet she had satisfied him: satisfied him, to all appearances, as
completely in the quiet later years as in the first flushed hours.
As completely, or perhaps even more so.
In the early months,
dazzled gratitude made her the humbler, fonder worshipper: but as her powers
expanded in the warm air of comprehension, as she felt herself grow handsomer,
cleverer, more competent and more companionable than he had hoped, or she had
dreamed herself capable of becoming, the balance was imperceptibly reversed,
and the triumph in his eyes when they rested on her.

 
          
The
Hazeldeans were conquered; they had to admit it.
such
a brilliant recruit to the clan was not to be disowned. Mrs. Mant was left to
nurse her grievance in solitude, till she too fell into line, carelessly but
handsomely forgiven.

 
          
Ah,
those first years of triumph! They frightened Lizzie now as she looked back.
One day, the friendless defenceless daughter of a discredited man; the next,
almost the wife of Charlie Hazeldean, the popular successful young lawyer, with
a good practice already assured, and the best of professional and private
prospects. His own parents were dead, and had died poor; but two or three
childless relatives were understood to be letting their capital accumulate for
his benefit, and meanwhile in Lizzie’s thrifty hands his earnings were largely
sufficient.

 
          
Ah,
those first years! There had been barely six; but even now there were moments
when their sweetness drenched her to the soul… Barely six; and then the sharp
re-awakening of an inherited weakness of the heart that Hazeldean and his
doctors had imagined to be completely cured. Once before, for the same cause,
he had been sent off, suddenly, for a year of travel in mild climates and
distant scenes; and his first return had coincided with the close of Lizzie’s
sojourn at Mrs. Mant’s. The young man felt sure enough of the future to marry
and take up his professional duties again, and for the following six years he
had led, without interruption, the busy life of a successful lawyer; then had
come a second break-down, more unexpectedly, and with more alarming symptoms. The
“Hazeldean heart” was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans
privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far
more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to
survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some
quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its
revenge, and took it savagely.

 
          
One
by one, hopes and plans faded. The Hazeldeans went south for a winter; he lay
on a deck-chair in a
Florida
garden, and read and dreamed, and was happy with Lizzie beside him. So
the months passed; and by the following autumn he was better, returned to
New York
, and took up his profession. Intermittently
but obstinately, he had continued the struggle for two more years; but before
they were over husband and wife understood that the good days were done.

 
          
He
could be at his office only at lengthening intervals; he sank gradually into
invalidism without submitting to it. His income dwindled; and, indifferent for
himself, he fretted ceaselessly at the thought of depriving Lizzie of the least
of her luxuries.

 
          
At
heart she was indifferent to them too; but she could not convince him of it. He
had been brought up in the old New York tradition, which decreed that a man, at
whatever cost, must provide his wife with what she had always “been accustomed
to”; and he had gloried too much in her prettiness, her elegance, her easy way
of wearing her expensive dresses, and his friends’ enjoyment of the good
dinners she knew how to order, not to accustom her to everything which could
enhance such graces. Mrs. Mant’s secret satisfaction rankled in him. She sent
him
Baltimore
terrapin, and her famous clam broth, and a
dozen of the old Hazeldean port, and said “I told you so” to her confidants
when Lizzie was mentioned; and Charles Hazeldean knew it, and swore at it.

 
          
“I
won’t be pauperized by her!” he declared; but Lizzie smiled away his anger, and
persuaded him to taste the terrapin and sip the port.

 
          
She
was smiling faintly at the memory of the last passage between him and Mrs. Mant
when the turning of the bedroom door-handle startled her. She jumped up, and he
stood there. The blood rushed to her forehead; his expression frightened her;
for an instant she stared at him as if he had been an enemy. Then she saw that
the look in his face was only the remote lost look of excessive physical pain.

 
          
She
was at his side at once, supporting him, guiding him to the nearest armchair.
He sank into it, and she flung a shawl over him, and knelt at his side while
his inscrutable eyes continued to repel her.

 
          
“Charles…Charles,”
she pleaded.

 
          
For
a while he could not speak; and she said to herself that she would perhaps
never know whether he had sought her because he was ill, or whether illness had
seized him as he entered her room to question, accuse, or reveal what he had
seen or heard that afternoon.

 
          
Suddenly
he lifted his hand and pressed back her forehead, so that her face lay bare
under his eyes.

 
          
“Love,
love—you’ve been happy?”

 
          
“
Happy
?” The word choked her. She clung
to him, burying her anguish against his knees. His hand stirred weakly in her
hair, and gathering her whole strength into the gesture, she raised her head
again, looked into his eyes, and breathed back: “And you?”

 
          
He
gave her one full look; all their life together was in it, from the first day
to the last. His hand brushed her once more, like a blessing, and then dropped.
The moment of their communion was over; the next she was preparing remedies,
ringing for the servants, ordering the doctor to be called. Her husband was
once more the harmless helpless captive that sickness makes of the most dreaded
and the most loved.

 
          
 